


On The Verge of All Things New

by gnomi



Category: Glee
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:25:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnomi/pseuds/gnomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Puppy pile in Bushwick!</p>
            </blockquote>





	On The Verge of All Things New

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally conceived as a simple, fluffy puppy pile fic. It gained some thinky thoughts, but it’s still basically just a fluffy puppy pile fic.
> 
> Title and song lyric near the end from Billy Joel's "Two Thousand Years."

On the Verge of All Things New  
By Nomi

There’s a weird tension in the air during the last notes of “Just the Way You Are,” so Blaine does what he always does in weirdly tense situations -- he starts a new song. At first he’s just noodling on the keyboard, but then he starts playing Billy Joel songs, his mind going back to where it was just before. He plays background music while the other four move around the loft, getting themselves drinks and snacks, settling into the assorted bits of furniture around the main room. But he does what he often does, playing around with the mood and tempo of well-known songs to better fit what he himself is feeling. And that’s how he finds himself taking “Pressure” out of its original minor key and turning it into a polka. 

As the final notes fade out, he looks up from the keyboard to see Kurt and Rachel snuggling on the sofa with Sam and Santana sitting on chairs flanking them. There’s space next to Kurt on the side where Rachel isn’t, so Blaine squeezes himself into it, smushed up against Kurt’s hip on one side and the arm of the sofa on the other.

“We can shift over,” Kurt says, his tone teasing.

“Yeah, shove over,” says Sam, standing up from his chair. “We were going to watch a movie, right?”

As the occupants of the sofa shuffle around, Santana walks over to the wall of DVDs behind them and starts pulling some off the shelf. “I’m taking out the ones I refuse to watch with the bunch of you. There will be no musicals watched this afternoon; this apartment has turned into one giant musical.”

“Santana, almost all of our movies are musicals,” Rachel protests.

“Well, that’s too bad. We’ll have to watch either an action movie, an animal documentary, or a romantic comedy at this point.”

“How about ‘A League of Their Own’?” Kurt asks. Blaine is tucked against his side with Kurt’s right arm around his shoulders. HIs feet are up on Kurt’s knees, but he’s being careful not to kick Rachel, who is draped against Kurt’s left arm. 

“It’s a good thing the members of your harem are so short,” Santana says, to which Blaine squeaks “Hey!” though it’s not clear even to himself whether he’s protesting being called short or protesting the idea that Kurt has a harem.

“C’mon, ‘Tana,” Rachel says. “You know how comfortable this is.” She snuggles closer to Kurt, and Blaine moves his feet just a bit more to give her a tiny bit more space.

“Yeah, I know. He’s remarkably snuggly for such a bony guy.” Santana looks at the group on the sofa, and Blaine gets about one second of warning before she is taking a very graceful leap and landing across all of their laps. His toes are now buried somewhere in the small of her back, so he wiggles them to see what her reaction will be.

“Hey, hobbit, stop that,” Santana growls, but it’s without heat. 

“‘Hobbit’? After this long, that’s the best you can do? And aren’t you repeating yourself?” He knows he’s poking the anthill, threatening the peace, but he and Santana have come a long way since they first met, especially since she faced Sebastian down on his behalf. 

“But ‘hobbit’ encompases both the fact that you’re tiny _and_ the fact that you have long, hairy toes you’re now sticking into my spinal column.” 

“All right,” Sam says from his place still on the chair. “I want in on this, and there’s no way we’re all going to fit on the sofa. So, everyone off!” 

The four on the sofa grumble a bit, but they all stand up eventually.

“Blaine, give me a hand?” Sam walks to one side of the coffee table and gestures for Blaine to take the other end. They move the table over to the side of the room, leaving a wide open space on the floor large enough for everyone.

“We need something to sit on,” Santana says, heading to her sleeping area. She comes back with a pile of pillows, some of which are hers and some of which she had stolen from Kurt and Rachel when she first moved in. She settles the pillows into a semicircle, then assesses the situation. “Rachel, Kurt, get your pillows. And some blankets, too.”

Blaine watches Rachel and Kurt throw vaguely dirty looks at Santana as they go to their rooms to get the requested items. He wonders frequently about their dynamic and how his presence -- should things unfold the way he hopes they will -- will change whatever the dynamic is. He knows it’s more than just Santana bossing the other two around; knowing both Kurt and Rachel as he does, Blaine realizes that it is most likely that the three each take turns being the bossy one.

When Rachel returns, she’s carrying four pillows and has a couple of blankets draped over her arm. An oddly shaped pillow thing is also tucked over her arm; when Blaine goes to help her carry her load of bed covers, he notices that _it_ has an arm, hand, and fingers. 

“What’s this?” he asks, grinning.

“Not what, who. That’s Colin; treat him nicely. Kurt got him for me.” Rachel kneels down and arranges her pillows inside the semicircle Santana had made and placed the blankets to the side. 

“Kurt?” Blaine calls out, “Why didn’t you ever get _me_ a maybe-creepy-pillow-arm-thingy named Colin?”

“They’re not _all_ named Colin,” Rachel says, “Kurt --” 

Whatever Rachel was about to say is cut off as Kurt comes running out of his space, carrying a bunch of pillows and with blankets dragging behind him. “ _Rachel!_ ” he says sharply.

“Kurt, be careful! You’re gonna…” Blaine starts, but before he can warn Kurt fully, the blanket that had been dragging closest to Kurt’s left foot wraps itself around his ankle as he spins to glare at Rachel and Kurt goes down in a heap.

Blaine immediately runs over to Kurt and bends down next to him. “You OK? You need some ice?”

Kurt sits up quickly. “No, Blaine, I’m fine. Sad to say, but I’ve learned to fall as gracefully as possible in Miss July’s class.” With a hand from Blaine, Kurt gets back up but leaves the heap of pillows and blankets on the floor, pushing them toward the semicircle with his feet. As Santana and Rachel arrange them with the rest, he says, “Do you think that’s enough?”

“For the time being,” Blaine says, surveying the makeshift nest on the floor. “I’ll go get the popcorn while someone puts the DVD in.” He heads into the kitchen and finds the bags of popcorn. When he comes back into the common area, Rachel, Kurt, and Santana are already stretched out on the floor, their heads on the outermost ring of pillows. He assesses the situation, makes a strategic decision, and says, “Shove over, Santana. I should get a space by my fiancé.”

“Make Berry move,” Santana growls, but after a moment she wiggles over by one pillow, leaving as small a space as possible for him.

“Good thing I’m… compact,” Blaine says, easing himself next to Kurt and laying his head on Kurt’s chest.

“You’re just the right size,” Kurt says, stretching his arm out under Blaine’s shoulders.

“Wanky,” Santana mutters, but she grins and snuggles into Blaine’s other side.

Sam finishes doing whatever he was doing over by the book shelves and approaches the group. “Any space left for me?” he asks.

“There’s plenty of room on Rachel’s side,” Blaine says. Things are better between Santana and Sam, Blaine is happy to note, but their peace is still tenuous enough to not want to provoke them.

A look passes between Rachel and Sam, but it’s too fleeting for Blaine to interpret, and then Sam eases himself down next to Rachel. Kurt, who has the remote, starts the movie, and for a brief time the group is silent as the story unfolds on the screen. 

“Trouty, pass the popcorn,” Santana says eventually, and the bowl travels slowly from Sam to Rachel to Kurt, each of whom takes a handful of the snack. “Oh, just gimme,” Santana says after Kurt pops a kernel into Blaine’s mouth, reaching across Blaine to grab the bowl.

Kurt moves the bowl back towards Sam and pulls gently on Santana’s arm so that she’s draped across Blaine and almost in Kurt’s lap.

“No fair, Hummel.” She makes a move toward the bowl, but Sam grabs it away and rests it to his left.

Blaine suddenly realizes that he has a lapful of Santana and isn’t quite sure how he’s supposed to react. Sure, Kurt and Santana have become close since they became roommates, and Santana dropped everything to help out with the proposal, but Blaine’s still not completely sure where he stands with her. He’s got one hand trapped underneath her, and if she doesn’t move soon, his hand is going to fall asleep. He starts to shift his hand a little, just to relieve the pressure on his wrist, but Santana says, “Watch it, Anderson,” so he stops.

“Santana, give Blaine a break,” Rachel says. “You basically draped yourself across him without an invitation.”

“For the second time,” Kurt grumbles.

“What can I say, Hummel. He’s comfortable. He’s warm, and he’s got just enough belly on him to make a good cushion.”

“Hey!” Blaine protests. “I work out! I box, I did Sue 90X and stayed with the class until she shut it down to go back to McKinley...”

“I love your belly, Blaine,” Kurt whispers in his ear. “And she’s right -- it does make you that much snugglier.” Kurt illustrates his point by snuggling into the part of Blaine that isn’t covered in Santana.

“Bro, we get it. You’re big trouble in a small package. You’re also talking over the movie,” Sam says around yet another mouthful of popcorn.

Silence falls across the room again except for the crunching of popcorn. Santana stays where she is, draped across Blaine with her head on Kurt, but she rolls over onto her side so that she can see the television screen.

“‘Tana…” Kurt says after a few minutes, “Blaine is not your lounge chair.”

“He’s _very_ comfortable. And if you want me to move, why are you doing… oh, yeah, like that… that thing you do to my hair when we watch TV?”

Blaine turns his head and sees that Kurt does, indeed, have his fingers all tangled in Santana’s hair and is massaging her scalp. Kurt’s fingers pause at Santana’s words, but he doesn’t move them away from her head.

“Force of habit?” Kurt asks, but it’s clear to Blaine that barring an actual complaint from anyone in the room, the skritching wasn’t going to stop.

“Don’t you dare stop, or I’ll… well, I don’t know what I’d do, but you wouldn’t like it.” Santana settles more comfortably -- for her, at least; Blaine is still mostly trapped -- and turns back to the movie. 

Another few scenes pass before Blaine realizes that there’s rustling to his left, beyond Kurt. He shifts little enough that he doesn’t jostle Santana but enough that he can comfortably look toward the sounds. He’s surprised, though he supposes he shouldn’t be, to see Sam pulling Rachel against him to lean her head on his shoulder. The more Blaine thinks about it, though, the more it makes sense. He smiles slightly, and Kurt whispers, “What?”

“Look left,” he whispers back, and when Kurt does and then looks back, he sees a small smile on Kurt’s lips. “He’s a good guy, Sam is.”

“I _know_ , Blaine. I’ve known since Junior year.” 

Blaine sometimes forgets that Kurt and Sam’s history is longer than his own with Sam. He also sometimes forgets that he and Sam were at odds when Blaine first transferred to McKinley. So much has happened in so little time, and he realizes that the same must be true for Kurt, Rachel, and Santana. He snuggles in a little more, getting comfortable again under Santana and resting a hand lightly on Santana’s hip. He touches her a little tentatively, because he’s not sure she will be receptive, but when she doesn’t make any biting comments, he leaves it there.

Kurt eventually takes his hands out of Santana’s hair and moves to pull Blaine closer. Blaine snuggles even closer to Kurt’s side, slightly dislodging Santana, who grumbles slightly but shifts herself off of Blaine and crawls over Kurt and into the slight space between him and Rachel.

“C’mon, Berry. Gimme some lovin’,” Santana says before she kisses Rachel on the cheek.

Sam sits up and shoots Blaine a look of “WTF, dude?” but Blaine just shrugs. He wouldn’t have said that Rachel had any interest in Santana, but he also has to admit that things might be different now that Rachel and Santana are living together. 

Rachel kisses Santana’s cheek and then lies back down. “There. All of my favorite people, all in one place.” Even from his vantage point against Kurt’s chest, Blaine can see the sadness that flits across Rachel’s face, but she quickly schools her features again and puts her arms around Sam and Santana. “Now, you two are going to play nice, right?” she says to both of them.

“I’m good with this if you are,” Sam says, rubbing Rachel’s hip with the arm she’s lying against and giving her a kiss on the head.

“Watch your trouty lips is all I ask,” Santana responds. “Berry might be OK with them, but I sometimes worry about her taste, given that she’s kissed just about everyone in this room at one time or another.”

“Hey!” everyone says, but even as he protests Blaine realizes Santana is right. In fact, _he_ is the only one that Rachel kissed with any sort of intent, if he thought about it.

“You’re just intimidated because I’m more expressive with my affection than you are, ‘Tana,” Rachel says. “But we all know you’ve got a mushy streak a mile long.”

“Lies!” Santana says, but there’s no heat to it.

“Bully Whips,” Kurt says quietly.

“Pregnancy scare,” Rachel says.

“Proposal,” says Blaine, though he acknowledges to himself that “rock salt” or “Sebastian” would be just as appropriate, if less pleasant, references.

“Sympathy,” Sam whispers, almost too quiet for anyone to hear.

“OK, fine,” Santana says after a beat. “I love you guys, too. Even you, Trouty.”

“We were a good pair, once upon a time,” Sam said. “We were just too…”

“Gay?” Santana asks, making everyone else laugh.

“Well, yes. You were. But we were young, we didn’t know what we wanted.”

“And for a time we wanted the same thing. Person.”

“Wonderful person,” Sam acknowledges. “On that we always agreed.”

For a little while, the only noise in the room comes from the movie still playing, but there’s no tension in the silence. There’s some shifting around of position, and Blaine can hear quiet conversations from the people around him. He stays quiet, thinking about how lucky he is to have not only Kurt but also all of these people whom he never would have met were it not for Kurt. And he thanked God -- or whoever watched over gay teenage musicians with big dreams -- that he had Kurt back and also that these people remained in his life even when he and Kurt were at their lowest point.

“You’re thinking very loudly,” Kurt says.

“I’m just appreciating,” Blaine responds.

“What are you appreciating?”

“You. This. All of this.” Blaine leans in and kisses Kurt on the cheek, then rolls up onto his knees and crawls across Kurt. He places a kiss on Santana’s cheek, then one on Rachel’s, but he freezes when he crawls across Rachel to Sam. While things are comfortable between them, no question, there’s still a tiny lingering embarrassment about his crush and the fact that Sam knew about it.

“C’mon, Bro,” Sam says, sitting up. “It’s cool.” Sam presses a brief kiss to Blaine’s cheek and then throws his arms around Blaine for a hug. “Wanna lie by me for a bit?” Sam asks.

“I get to cuddle with you all the time; I’m gonna get my Kurt cuddling in now, if that’s all right with you.”

“I get it. Go get your snuggles on.” Sam lies back down and puts his arm back around Rachel, who tucks herself further into Sam’s side.

Blaine crawls his way back across, kissing the opposite cheeks from what he kissed on his way over, and settles himself straddling Kurt. He leans down and kisses Kurt long and deep.

“There’s something familiar about this,” Kurt whispers, “though I was on top last time.”

“And we’re not crammed in the back of a car.”

“And neither Tina nor Mercedes are here to cockblock us.”

“No,” Santana says, “but we are. So don’t do anything you don’t want to see tomorrow on YouTube.”

“You wouldn’t,” Kurt says sharply.

“I might.”

“I have three words for you. Drunken Dani cam.”

“Isn’t ‘Danicam’ one word?” Rachel asks.

“Not helping, sweetie,” Kurt says, his tone much less sharp than the one he’d used with Santana.

“Sorry.” 

Sam leans down and kisses Rachel on the head. “Is it horrible I wouldn’t mind watching the drunken Dani-cam footage?”

“Can we keep topic drift to a minimum here?” Kurt asks.

“We’re having a snuggle, Kurt, not a Pamela Lansbury meeting. I didn’t think there could be a topic drift during a snuggle,” Santana responds. 

“And isn’t keeping meetings on track more Blaine’s kind of thing than yours?” asks Sam.

“I guess he’s rubbing off on me,” Kurt says, and Blaine starts to blush the minute the words come out of Kurt’s mouth. 

“Wanky!” Santana says again, and Blaine blushes harder.

“Oh, God. That’s _not_ how I meant that.”

“Aw, lady, you know I’m just giving you a hard time,” Santana says, leaning over and kissing Kurt on the tip of his nose.

“Hey!” Blaine says, indignant.

“What? He doesn’t mind when I call him ‘lady’ anymore. He knows it’s a term of affection.” Santana looks honestly confused, and Blaine realizes that a whole lot went on in his head in a tiny amount of time and he now has to explain himself.

“The nose thing… That’s kind of my thing.” 

“You feel proprietary about his nose?” Santana asks.

“You feel proprietary about my _nose_?” Kurt asks.

“It’s…” Blaine barely can come up with the words to explain it internally, let alone to other people. “Our first time, we… I…” He sighs heavily. It’s not like he hasn’t been emotionally stripped bare in front of these people before. But in the past it had felt less invasive. He couldn’t really say why; this group of people was his rock, his foundation. Without them -- in various combinations, in various permutations -- he wouldn’t be the person he was. But this wasn’t what he had expected.

Kurt clearly tries to rescue him by saying, “We did a whole thing with our noses…” before he realizes he’s just making it worse.

“You had to be there,” Blaine finally said.

“Actually, I’m _extremely_ glad they weren’t,” Kurt responded.

“So are we, I promise. So are we.” Sam’s expression shifted into a combination of fond exasperation and vague revulsion.

Whatever anyone was about to say is interrupted by the loft’s door sliding open and Dani and Elliot walking in. 

“Huh,” Dani says. “I thought Santana said they’d be home this evening.”

“We’re down here!” Santana calls from her place on the floor, but she makes no obvious effort to move.

“How long has the DVD been playing the menu screen?” Elliot asks, moving toward the TV to turn it off.

“Who knows? What time is it, anyway? And who are you?” Sam asks.

“Who are you?” Dani counters.

“Sam. I came with Blaine.”

“Wan--” Santana is cut off when Blaine reaches across Kurt and puts his hand over her mouth.

“Blech!” he yells almost immediately. “No licking!”

“That’s not what you said last night,” she counters.

“ _Santana!_ ” Blaine, Kurt, Rachel, and Sam yell almost as one.

“Yeah, Santana. That’s not what _you_ said last night, either,” Dani says, a grin on her face. She kneels down behind the semicircle of pillows between Santana and Rachel. “Is there room for me?”

Rachel and Santana each move over and Dani steps over the pillows to lie between them. 

“Is this a private snuggle, or is there space for more?” Elliot stood by the edge, and Blaine could see the uncertainty on his face.

“Hi, I’m Blaine.”

“I figured. I’m Elliot… I’m with the band.”

“I figured.” Blaine had heard of Elliot, of course, and had seen a couple of the videos Kurt had put up on YouTube, but still Elliot was an unknown factor to Blaine.

Kurt rolls onto his side and whispers in Blaine’s ear. “He’s a good guy. He came off kind of aggressive at the beginning, but he’s… you’ll like him, I think.”

“You like him?”

“Yeah,” Kurt says. “I do. Have him come join us, if you’re OK with it.”

Blaine looks back up at Elliot and says, “Pull up a pillow. I’m fine with you joining if you’re fine with it.”

“I’m fine with it if Kurt is fine with it. I don’t want him to think I’m making a move on you.” Elliot looks at Kurt, a question clearly on his face.

“As if,” Kurt says.

Elliot apparently considers that sufficient, as he sits down next to Blaine and then stretches out. “So…” he starts, but it’s clear to Blaine that despite the invitation to join him on the floor, Elliot is still feeling somewhat out of his element.

“So, as I said, I’m Blaine, and I’m Kurt’s fiancé.”

“Yeah, he’s mentioned you once or twice,” Elliot says, smirking.

“Just be glad you weren’t around a couple of months ago,” Santana says from beyond Kurt. “There was pining.”

“I wasn’t pining. I was…” Kurt pauses, shakes his head, and says, “OK, I was pining. I didn’t think so then; I _thought_ I was moving on.”

“I have four words for _you_ ,” Santana says. “Wedding fiasco hook up.”

“Does ‘hook-up’ count as two words, or one word hyphenated?” Rachel asks from behind Santana.

“Missing the _point_ , Rachel,” Santana responds. She thinks for a minute and then says, “OK, you don’t like those four? How about ‘Come What May crying’?”

Blaine darts a look at Santana and then one at Kurt; there must be a story there. 

“ _Santana_ ,” Kurt hisses.

“What? It all went fine in the end. Though I occasionally do miss Doctor Who.” 

Kurt reaches out and smacks Santana lightly on the arm. “You never liked him.”

“I didn’t _hate_ him; he just wasn’t worthy,” Santana responds.

“I’m… gonna assume you’re not talking about Matt Smith and leave this here,” Blaine says, hoping that would stop whatever this line of conversation was trying to be. Instead, he turns to Elliot. “Are you as confused by the two of them as I am?”

“Every minute of every day,” Elliot replies with a grin.

“Wanna snuggle?” Blaine asks.

“Is it OK with my fearless leader over there?” Elliot asks, gesturing toward Kurt.

“He doesn’t _own_ me,” Blaine responds, but then he grins and says, “But, yes. He gave his seal of approval.”

“Well, then,” Elliot says, rolling onto his side to face Blaine, “shall we get to it? Are there set rules for this snuggle?”

“Uh…” Blaine thinks a minute, because Elliot really is an unknown quantity to him. But Kurt trusts him, and that goes a long way in Blaine’s mind. “Not really. So far it’s just been snuggles and the occasional platonic kiss.”

“Well, except one,” Kurt interjects.

“OK, one non-platonic kiss,” Blaine concedes, “but we’re _engaged_.”

“As both of you make clear almost every other sentence,” Rachel says, but it’s a friendly jab.

“But for a cuddle pile, it’s been kind of tame, if you ask me,” Santana says. “Now that Dani’s here, though…”

“All clothing remains on, Santana. I really don’t need to see your…” Kurt is blushing, which Blaine finds absolutely adorable; he also knows better than to say so.

“There’s a lot we can do with all clothing staying on, or hasn’t the Hobbit --” 

“ _Santana_!” Kurt says. “Enough! You’ve called me sexually repressed since tenth grade, except when you’re making snide comments about the sex life I _do_ have.”

“I want it both ways?” Santana asks with a smirk. “But, truthfully, I was a bit jealous. You weren’t afraid to be who you were, even when you were just a baby gay.”

“Baby penguin?” Blaine whispers, and Kurt starts to giggle, losing all steam he was building up for a fight with Santana.

“Not any more,” Kurt whispers back when he gets himself under control again. “So what’s the current situation with Elliot?”

“I…” Blaine tenses slightly, unsure how to frame what he wants to say. This has been a wonderful visit, and he doesn’t want to mess it up. 

“I’m going to grab myself a glass of water,” Elliot says, rolling onto his knees and then getting to his feet. “Save my place, OK?”

“What’s going on, Blaine?” Kurt’s face shows his concern, though he’s still quite relaxed.

“Elliot just…” Blaine pauses, shakes his head quickly, and starts again. “You and I have each other, Santana’s got Dani, Rachel has _all of us_. But Elliot, he doesn’t have any logical person to snuggle with. And that’s… In this kind of environment, what we’ve set up here tonight, it’s awkward and it’s lonely if you’re the only one without a partner.”

“You and Santana had no problem getting snuggly not half an hour ago; Hell, Santana and Rachel and I get snuggly in all sorts of permutations,” Kurt protests.

“And how long have you all known each other? ‘Tana and I may not have been friends for most of it, but she and I have a history. You and Rachel and ‘Tana have a history. Elliot is… he’s the odd man out.”

“You, Blaine Devon Anderson, have the biggest heart in the whole world.” Kurt gives him a deep kiss and then says, “Let’s double-team him.”

“That was… You used a sports metaphor!”

“I told you that you were rubbing off on me.”

“Didn’t we just talk about this?” Santana snaps, but then she dissolves in laughter.

Elliot walks back in as Santana tries to bring herself under control. “What’s so funny?”

“The Hobbit is rubbing off on Hummel,” Santana tries to answer, though her words are interrupted with giggles.

“Don’t worry,” Blaine says at Elliot’s confused look. “She barely makes sense to _us_ , and some of us have known her since the beginning of tenth grade.”

“True enough,” says Kurt. “Come on back down here, Elliot. I promise we don’t bite.”

Blaine suppresses the urge to make the obvious and cheesy comment that, if asked, he just _might_ bite. He figures his friends would mock him for it and Elliot and Dani might think him weird for it. Instead, he says, “But we can’t promise we won’t snuggle.”

“Snuggling, I thought, was part of the point,” Elliot says, crouching down on the floor where he had previously lain.

“Come over here,” Kurt says, patting the floor between himself and Blaine. “Blaine, can you move over a skooch to make space?”

“Of course,” Blaine responds, shifting enough to make a body’s worth of space.

“I don’t want to get between…” Elliot starts, but he cuts off when Kurt reaches out, grabs Elliot’s arms, and pulls him across Blaine and onto the floor between them. “OK; your wish is my command, my fearless leader.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Kurt says, wiggling his eyebrows. He leans in and kisses Elliot’s forehead. “There.”

Blaine rolls over toward Elliot and leans in close. “Pass it along,” he whispers in Elliot’s ear as he lightly tickles Elliot’s side. Elliot giggles quietly and rolls toward Kurt, whispering to him and tickling him on the side before Kurt can acknowledge what is going on. It continues along the line, with the tickle being passed along until they’re all giggling. Finally someone -- Blaine guesses it’s Rachel, though she would never retaliate directly -- figures out where the tickling originated, and Santana yells out “Get him!” She scrambles to her feet, jumps over Kurt and Elliot, and curls up next to Blaine, digging her fingers into the sensitive space right under his ribcage. Pretty soon they’re a writhing, laughing mess on the floor, with Blaine giving as good as he gets and stray fingers that attempt to tickle him accidentally getting a different victim. As they all lie on the floor, panting for breath between giggles, Blaine turns to Kurt.

“This is what you meant, isn’t it? This is what I’ll be here for, as much as for NYADA.”

“Yeah. And if your audition was half as good as Sam is saying it is, you’ll be a shoo-in. Now come on,” Kurt says, sitting up and pulling Blaine to his feet. “Let’s go make these freeloaders some food.”

This, Blaine thinks as he follows Kurt to the kitchen area. This is what it’s about -- family, the friends who _are_ family, and the ones who could become family. It’s about the comfort and the comforting, the knowing and the being known. What comes next is almost irrelevant as long as it includes this feeling. _This is our moment, here at the crossroads of time_. And the best part is, he’ll be here permanently in just a couple of months. 

END


End file.
